The Question in Maps

ADMINISTRATIVE BOUNDARIES Administrative Boundaries under the Ottomans Prior to the British Mandate, Ottoman Pal- VILAYET OF ALEPPO Main City estine was made up of three Sanjaks, or Aleppo Sanjak Boundary sub-provinces, each ruled by a Mutasarrif Vilayet Boundary Sanjak of Aleppo (provincial governor). Of these, the Sanjak Railway of Acre and that of Balqa’, or , fell Latakia within the larger Vilayet (province) of Bei- Sanjak rut, while the largest, Jerusalem -owing to of Sanjak its religious and historical status- was in- Latakia Hama of dependent, with its governor responsible Hama directly to the Sultan. Mediterranean The British administered Palestine Sea Sanjak of Homs through a series of 16 sub-districts, each Tripoli responsible to the High Commissioner in Tripoli the capital, Jerusalem. These sub-districts were adjusted once, in the late 1930s, Sanjak but remained operational throughout the of Mandate. Following the 1947-1949 War, Beirut administered the West Bank ac- Beirut cording to similar set of sub-districts, plac- Sanjak of VILAYET OF BEIRUT ing the villages surrounding its 11 principal towns under local governors responding Damascus to via Jerusalem, which remained the Palestinian capital and was also de- Sur clared the ‘second capital’ of Jordan.

Acre Israel’s occupation in 1967 saw these rea- Sanjak sonably organic sub-divisions replaced of Haifa by a streamlined system of military ruled Acre through seven large governorates, which denied the existence of Palestinian Jeru-

Sanjak salem both as a city and as Palestine’s of Balqa' central administrative sub-division. (Nablus) Jaffa In 1995, the Palestinian Authority adopted Sanjak of new administrative sub-divisions, return- ing to boundaries more in keeping both Jerusalem with historical fact and local Palestinian Gaza socio-economic and cultural factors, form- Independent

Sanjak of ing an 11 governorate system in the West Bank and dividing, for the first time, the Jerusalem V I L A Y E T O F S Y R I A populous Gaza Strip into five governor- ates. Each PA governorate was placed under a local authority which administered both Area A and B through branches of ‘national’ ministerial and welfare services, except in the re-designated Jerusalem Sanjak of Ma'an governorate, where the lack of an Area A presence limited PA governmental activity.

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Al-Aqaba

Map: PASSIA, 2002

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